ABC, CBS, FOX & NBC Have Lost More Than 77% Of Their Market Share

[mgk920]

Like with George Jetson's daily commute to the office, including his foray on to the freeway.

 

Mike

[Max Rockatansky]

Like with George Jetson's daily commute to the office, including his foray on to the freeway.

 

Mike

I dig the theory that the Jetsons is set in some post-apocalyptic version of Earth where people have to live above the radioactive surface.  The theory holds that the surface is comprised of mutants people mistake for dinosaurs.  The surface is full of people who have reverted to a quasi-stone age who emulate cultural elements of the modern world.  Certainly would explain the Jetsons/Flintstones crossover TV special. 

[kphoger]

Lots of buffering and lost signals. Not my internet problem.

How are so confident in saying that?  (Asking as someone who works for the cable/internet company.)

[NWI_Irish96]

Lots of buffering and lost signals. Not my internet problem.

How are so confident in saying that?  (Asking as someone who works for the cable/internet company.)

Speed test app shows > 500 mbps to the room where the TV is.

[kphoger]

Speed test app shows > 500 mbps to the room where the TV is.

There's more to signal health than just Mb/s, you know.  Have you tried any sort of hardwired setup, so you can see if there's a difference between wired and Wi-Fi?

[gonealookin]

Speed test app shows > 500 mbps to the room where the TV is.

There's more to signal health than just Mb/s, you know.  Have you tried any sort of hardwired setup, so you can see if there's a difference between wired and Wi-Fi?

I get 50 Mbps download speeds on our decrepit 1970s cable system and am able to run Youtube TV and other services such as MLB.tv just fine.

NWI_Irish is likely trying to get streaming on the cheap by subscribing to services that are streaming without licenses to do so.  The 2020s version of "stealing cable", which was popular in the 20th century (no comment as to whether I may ever have benefited from doing that).  If you're dealing with hinky operators like that, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the service is inconsistent.

I would suggest running a free trial of a legitimate service (such as Youtube TV's current offer of 21 days for free) and comparing the reliablity of that to these other IPTV services you've tried.

[Molandfreak]

NWI_Irish is likely trying to get streaming on the cheap by subscribing to services that are streaming without licenses to do so.  The 2020s version of "stealing cable", which was popular in the 20th century (no comment as to whether I may ever have benefited from doing that).  If you're dealing with hinky operators like that, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the service is inconsistent.

There's usually only a 3-year window until the statute of limitations expires. You're good admitting to stealing cable over 25 years ago.

[kphoger]

Fun fact:  because cable is considered a utility, stealing cable is a felony.  There have been people led out of our office in handcuffs for helping customers get free cable.

Anyway, my main point is that a speed test app doesn't tell you the quality of your signal.  I'm guessing it's probably not going to tell you about any ingress, any MER or BER issues, any T3 or T4 timeout trends, any packet loss, any correctable or uncorrectable errors, etc, etc, etc.  Maybe it will show you a couple of those things, I don't know, but a little digital speedometer needle on your phone is not all you need to evaluate your internet signal health.

[Molandfreak]

Fun fact:  because cable is considered a utility, stealing cable is a felony.  There have been people led out of our office in handcuffs for helping customers get free cable.

Sure, but for an offence that occurred more than a quarter century ago?

[NWI_Irish96]

Speed test app shows > 500 mbps to the room where the TV is.

There's more to signal health than just Mb/s, you know.  Have you tried any sort of hardwired setup, so you can see if there's a difference between wired and Wi-Fi?

I don't really have a way to get a hard wire from the router to the TV. They're 3 rooms apart.

[ZLoth]

It could be that the weakest link is the WiFi router, especially if it is a ISP-supplied WiFi router. I had one of those when I moved to Texas, and not only was the speed limited to 54 Mbps, only 16 devices could be hooked up through WiFi. It was quickly replaced with a older Mesh router that I had brought with me, and replaced again in 2023 with a Mesh system that supported higher WiFi speeds.

Here is a clipped screenshot from my Pixel 9 phone to a Speedtest module that I have on my TrueNAS server in a Docker container. It is not representative of my ISP speed (which is a near-Gigabit connection):

[NWI_Irish96]

It could be that the weakest link is the WiFi router, especially if it is a ISP-supplied WiFi router. I had one of those when I moved to Texas, and not only was the speed limited to 54 Mbps, only 16 devices could be hooked up through WiFi. It was quickly replaced with a older Mesh router that I had brought with me, and replaced again in 2023 with a Mesh system that supported higher WiFi speeds.

Here is a clipped screenshot from my Pixel 9 phone to a Speedtest module that I have on my TrueNAS server in a Docker container. It is not representative of my ISP speed (which is a near-Gigabit connection):

My TV doesn't have a way to evaluate speed, but if I run speedtest on my phone, connected to the same wifi, standing right next to the TV I get 200+ mbps.

Is that not enough for a reliable IPTV service?

Also, back to my original question--is anybody else using an IPTV service, and if so, which one?

[kphoger]

I don't really have a way to get a hard wire from the router to the TV. They're 3 rooms apart.

Then you really have no idea if it's your internet service or your Wi-Fi router or whatever device you're playing IPTV on, right?

Spit-balling, here...  Assuming there's a way to hard-wire your IPTV device to your router (and I'm not sure there is, but I'm sure you do), you could just take the device into the same room as your router, run a jumper of whatever cable that requires (coax? ethernet? preferably an ISP-provided one, because then it will have shielding and fittings that meet your ISP's specs), and then a long-ass HDMI cable three rooms away the IPTV device to your TV set.  Obviously, that's not a long-term solution but, if you leave it like that for a few days, then you'd have an idea of what a hard-wired connection is like.  You'd still be limited to whatever out-port of the router you're using but, otherwise, you wouldn't be losing much signal at all.

My TV doesn't have a way to evaluate speed, but if I run speedtest on my phone, connected to the same wifi, standing right next to the TV I get 200+ mbps.

Is that not enough for a reliable IPTV service?

Also, back to my original question--is anybody else using an IPTV service, and if so, which one?

Carrie and I watch everything over the Roku via Wi-Fi, so not technically IPTV.  But we've been on the second-slowest internet package that Cox offers for years now, and we don't have issues.  When we've had service issues, it's always ended up being an issue outside (an apartment complex back-feeding noise into the node, bad mainline amplifiers two or three poles down the line, that kind of thing), but it took my inside knowledge and ability to be persistent in order to get them resolved.  Our current plan is 300 Mb/s download speed, but that's probably twice what it was a couple of years ago.  I don't imagine 200 Mb/s being a problem unless you have multiple other people in the house gaming or streaming HD video at the same time as you're trying to watch TV.

At this point in the game, I'm assuming your router has multiple frequency bands.  So I'll reiterate my usual suggestion, which is to see if you can go into your router settings and designate certain frequency bands for certain devices.  The 2.4 GHz band does better at going through walls and appliances and such, but it's more heavily trafficked (this matters more if you live in an apartment, where your neighbors might be clogging up those frequencies).  The 5.0 GHz band gets interrupted more by objects but, absent such impediments, it would theoretically reach farther, and it's typically less trafficked.  So, if your IPTV device is the only thing having issues, then I'd suggesting putting only that device on the 5.0 band, leaving everything else on the 2.4 band, and see if that makes a difference.

[thenetwork]

Fun fact:  because cable is considered a utility, stealing cable is a felony.  There have been people led out of our office in handcuffs for helping customers get free cable.

Sure, but for an offence that occurred more than a quarter century ago?

Probably with a cable company that was taken over and/or merged 3-5 times since..

[Molandfreak]

Fun fact:  because cable is considered a utility, stealing cable is a felony.  There have been people led out of our office in handcuffs for helping customers get free cable.

Sure, but for an offence that occurred more than a quarter century ago?

Probably with a cable company that was taken over and/or merged 3-5 times since..

I wouldn't expect a SOL to reset under such circumstances.

[NWI_Irish96]

I don't really have a way to get a hard wire from the router to the TV. They're 3 rooms apart.

Then you really have no idea if it's your internet service or your Wi-Fi router or whatever device you're playing IPTV on, right?

Spit-balling, here...  Assuming there's a way to hard-wire your IPTV device to your router (and I'm not sure there is, but I'm sure you do), you could just take the device into the same room as your router, run a jumper of whatever cable that requires (coax? ethernet? preferably an ISP-provided one, because then it will have shielding and fittings that meet your ISP's specs), and then a long-ass HDMI cable three rooms away the IPTV device to your TV set.  Obviously, that's not a long-term solution but, if you leave it like that for a few days, then you'd have an idea of what a hard-wired connection is like.  You'd still be limited to whatever out-port of the router you're using but, otherwise, you wouldn't be losing much signal at all.

My TV doesn't have a way to evaluate speed, but if I run speedtest on my phone, connected to the same wifi, standing right next to the TV I get 200+ mbps.

Is that not enough for a reliable IPTV service?

Also, back to my original question--is anybody else using an IPTV service, and if so, which one?

Carrie and I watch everything over the Roku via Wi-Fi, so not technically IPTV.  But we've been on the second-slowest internet package that Cox offers for years now, and we don't have issues.  When we've had service issues, it's always ended up being an issue outside (an apartment complex back-feeding noise into the node, bad mainline amplifiers two or three poles down the line, that kind of thing), but it took my inside knowledge and ability to be persistent in order to get them resolved.  Our current plan is 300 Mb/s download speed, but that's probably twice what it was a couple of years ago.  I don't imagine 200 Mb/s being a problem unless you have multiple other people in the house gaming or streaming HD video at the same time as you're trying to watch TV.

At this point in the game, I'm assuming your router has multiple frequency bands.  So I'll reiterate my usual suggestion, which is to see if you can go into your router settings and designate certain frequency bands for certain devices.  The 2.4 GHz band does better at going through walls and appliances and such, but it's more heavily trafficked (this matters more if you live in an apartment, where your neighbors might be clogging up those frequencies).  The 5.0 GHz band gets interrupted more by objects but, absent such impediments, it would theoretically reach farther, and it's typically less trafficked.  So, if your IPTV device is the only thing having issues, then I'd suggesting putting only that device on the 5.0 band, leaving everything else on the 2.4 band, and see if that makes a difference.

I found a speed test app for my smart TV, never thought to look for that before. I'm getting 200+ mbps to the TV. All the other apps run fine. The IPTV service has a lot of buffering. I do think it's the service, not the connection.

[Scott5114]

My TV doesn't have a way to evaluate speed

If you posted this on the day this forum was started, everyone would have thought you were a lunatic.

I wouldn't expect a SOL to reset under such circumstances.

In that case, it's the prosecutor who's SOL.

[kphoger]

I found a speed test app for my smart TV, never thought to look for that before. I'm getting 200+ mbps to the TV. All the other apps run fine. The IPTV service has a lot of buffering. I do think it's the service, not the connection.

Are your other apps on the same device streaming video?

[NWI_Irish96]

I found a speed test app for my smart TV, never thought to look for that before. I'm getting 200+ mbps to the TV. All the other apps run fine. The IPTV service has a lot of buffering. I do think it's the service, not the connection.

Are your other apps on the same device streaming video?

Yes, I watch Peacock, YouTube, Hulu on the same device with no issues.

[bugo]

No one has yet mentioned that most of the comedy and drama content on the normal broadcast channels is so hokey and formulaic that it's unwatchable.
They basically replaced the evening lineups with only slightly less dramatic soap operas.

Another negative about broadcast television is that it is heavily sanitized. You can't even say "shit" or "fuck". Cable TV allows "bad" words. That makes broadcast TV much less realistic than real life. The FCC treats us like children.

[Rothman]

No one has yet mentioned that most of the comedy and drama content on the normal broadcast channels is so hokey and formulaic that it's unwatchable.
They basically replaced the evening lineups with only slightly less dramatic soap operas.

Another negative about broadcast television is that it is heavily sanitized. You can't even say "shit" or "fuck". Cable TV allows "bad" words. That makes broadcast TV much less realistic than real life. The FCC treats us like children.

You'd be surprised by how much of a demand there is for sanitized entertainment...

[kphoger]

Another negative about broadcast television is that it is heavily sanitized. You can't even say "shit" or "fuck". Cable TV allows "bad" words. That makes broadcast TV much less realistic than real life.

Only if the people you typically rub shoulders with use foul language.  I can easily go months at a time without hearing anybody say "shit" or "fuck" in real life, so, for me, the foul language on cable TV is less realistic than real life, not more.

[Bobby5280]

I don't mind OTA broadcast programming being an oasis of somewhat profanity-free content. We need to have at least a few content providers airing "clean" programming. Not everything needs to be at a rated-R or PG-13 level.

I feel sorry for parents raising kids in this age. They're facing a losing battle at sheltering young children from harmful content. The TV is the least of their problems. The stuff kids can access via an Internet-connected phone, tablet or computer is a whole lot worse.

[Max Rockatansky]

My mom was big on sheltering from explicit content.  Trouble was my dad didn't care and we saw pretty much every rated R movie under the sun together.  She was furious after finding out we had games like Doom and the original Mortal Kombat in the early 1990s. 

I don't think that I can go more than 20 minutes on the average day without hearing someone swear at work.  My wife and I swear fairly regularly.  Both of our extended families do as well. 

[kphoger]

My mom was big on sheltering from explicit content.  Trouble was my dad didn't care and we saw pretty much every rated R movie under the sun together.  She was furious after finding out we had games like Doom and the original Mortal Kombat in the early 1990s.

My dad didn't care either, and he probably actually considered exposing us to stuff like that to be part of raising children.  I do have an early childhood memory—kindergarten or first grade—of being scared of sinks with handles like this, because of that scene from Nightmare on Elm Street 3:



Recently, my wife and I watched Smokey and the Bandit with our youngest son.  It's the first time I'd ever seen the movie, but my wife has fond memories of watching it with her grandpa as a kid.  When it was over, I knew exactly what she was going to say, and she said it word for word:  "I can't believe Grandpa let me watch that as a kid.  Actually I can't believe Grandma let Grandpa watch that."  Obviously that movie is quite mild compared to a lot, but I goes to show the difference between her childhood and mine when it came to movie restrictions and such.

I don't think that I can go more than 20 minutes on the average day without hearing someone swear at work.

Actually, how long I go without hearing foul language depends a lot on which field techs show up for the weekly meeting on Thursdays.